Alex ACT Core

The plugin-native successor to Alex_ACT_Edition v4.2.0. Distributes the always-on epistemic discipline and reusable framework skills that heirs install via the Alex ACT Plugin Mall.

Status: v0.1.0 (unreleased). 72 baseline items ship as of 2026-07-30: 33 always-on instructions, 30 skills, 9 slash-command prompts, plus a shared runtime for the bundled document converters. Content lands through evidence-gated Steward proposals per Alex_ACT_Steward/constellation/act/CURATION-RULES.md.

Maintainer: Alex_ACT_Steward (top-of-chain in the plugin-architecture lineage since 2026-07-26 fork-and-freeze).

What this is

Alex ACT Core is the baseline plugin — the minimal always-on brain that every heir needs regardless of domain. It sits at the bottom of a three-layer stack:

Layer	What it ships	Example
Baseline (this plugin)	Always-on epistemic discipline + reusable framework skills, including document converters and a shared runtime	act-pass, critical-thinking, problem-framing-audit, meditation, md-to-word, docx-to-md, lint-clean-markdown
Specialization (Mall opt-in)	Domain plugins heirs install as needed	alex-act-illustrator-plugin (visual authoring), future Azure / Fabric / M365 plugins
Local customization (.github/skills/local/ in each heir)	Heir-specific customizations	Whatever the heir invented for their own project

What Core is NOT:

• Not the Copilot CLI itself — Core rides on top of Copilot CLI + Chat
• Not the shared Memory bus — that lives in Alex_ACT_Memory as a Git-backed sibling repo (per Steward Plan)
• Not the Mall itself — the Mall lives in Alex_ACT_Plugin_Mall and self-curates per ADR-008
• Not a visual-authoring bundle — chart authoring, SVG banners, print figures, and AI imagery live in alex-act-illustrator-plugin, not Core

Why the plugin?

Under the v1 heir-template model, Alex_ACT_Edition was a template each heir bootstrapped into its own .github/. Upgrading meant N-heir manual bootstraps. Under the plugin-native model, Core lives in one place (this repo → Mall) and every heir picks it up on next session via copilot plugin update alex-act-core. Fork-and-freeze on 2026-07-26 established that the plugin-native lineage runs alongside the frozen v1 compatibility line rather than replacing it in place.

Full reasoning in the Steward Plan (twelve chapters: overview → distribution mechanism → topology → migration strategy → nomenclature).

Layout

Alex_ACT_Core/
├── manifest.json               # Mall-side plugin metadata (identity, assets, install paths)
├── README.md                   # (this file)
├── CHANGELOG.md                # Keep a Changelog format
├── LICENSE                     # MIT
├── .gitignore
├── .markdownlint.json
├── .github/                    # Copilot Chat + CLI discovery surface
│   ├── copilot-instructions.md
│   ├── config/                 # brand-palette.json, welcome-baseline.json
│   ├── scripts/shared/         # runtime helpers used by the converter skills
│   ├── skills/                 # 30 skills (framework + craft + converters)
│   ├── instructions/           # 33 always-on instructions
│   ├── prompts/                # 9 slash-command prompts
│   └── agents/                 # (empty; agents ship through heir workspaces or specialization plugins)
└── .vscode/                    # workspace settings for self-dogfooding

Same layout as alex-act-illustrator-plugin — the proven Steward-authored CLI plugin pattern.

Install

Prerequisites (once per machine):

• Copilot CLI ≥ 1.0.75 — install docs. Verify with copilot --version. If already installed, update with winget upgrade --id GitHub.CopilotCLI (Windows).
• GitHub CLI authenticated — gh auth login and confirm with gh auth status.

Full brand-new-user walkthrough (four personas, five install stages, anti-patterns): see Alex_ACT_Steward/constellation/USER-EXPERIENCE.md.

Install from the Alex ACT Mall

Register the mall as a marketplace (one-time, per machine):

copilot plugin marketplace add fabioc-aloha/Alex_Skill_Mall

Then install Core:

copilot plugin install alex-act-core@alex-mall

Installs at user scope — Core becomes active in every workspace on the machine. That's the correct behavior; Core is an identity plugin per PLUGIN-INTEGRATION.md § 2.

Publication status. The Mall itself is live (v3.0.0 GA, 2026-07-28). Core's Mall entry lands in a coordinated Steward + Mall publication turn; until it's live, copilot plugin install alex-act-core@alex-mall returns "plugin not found." Watch Alex_Skill_Mall's catalog or the Steward curation log for the publication commit.

Verify the install

copilot plugin list

You should see alex-act-core@alex-mall with the current version.

Configure specializations (optional)

Once Core is in, invoke one of Core's plugin-management prompts from Copilot Chat:

• /install-constellation — installs the four-plugin constellation flow (Core + Illustrator + Enterprise + MSFT with tenant-check)
• /plugin-status — read-only inventory of what's installed at user + repo scope
• /update-plugins — safe update workflow with per-plugin CHANGELOG reading and consent for breaking changes

Full walkthrough with slash-command examples: USER-EXPERIENCE Stages 3–5.

Update Core

Copilot CLI does not auto-update plugins — updates are manual and version-pinned.

copilot plugin update alex-act-core

Read the CHANGELOG before applying a version that carries breaking changes. The safer path is to invoke Core's own /update-plugins prompt, which reads the CHANGELOG for you and consents-gate breaking updates.

Uninstall

copilot plugin uninstall alex-act-core

Troubleshooting. If the uninstall fails with either:

• Access is denied (os error 5) on Windows — close every VS Code window first. Copilot Chat's active MCP servers hold file handles on plugin binaries.
• Plugin "alex-act-core" is not installed with the plugin still showing in copilot plugin list [disabled] — you have a zombie entry in ~/.copilot/config.json's installedPlugins array.

Both failure modes and their fixes (including a working two-file cleanup pattern) are documented in USER-EXPERIENCE.md § Optional — start from a clean slate.

Runtime prerequisites for bundled converters

The document-conversion skills (docx-to-md, html-to-md, md-to-word, md-to-html, md-to-txt, md-to-eml) need supporting tools on PATH — heirs install these once:

• pandoc on PATH — required for all 6 converters
• mermaid-cli (mmdc) on PATH — required for md-to-html and md-to-word when the source contains Mermaid diagrams
• jszip in the workspace node_modules — optional; md-to-word uses it for a faster path and falls back to pandoc otherwise

Roadmap

Growth continues through evidence-gated proposals per Alex_ACT_Steward/constellation/act/CURATION-RULES.md. The Both-classified inventory (framework baseline shipped to Core) is complete as of Batch 10 (2026-07-30). Future additions come from Steward's brain plan Part II under Both classification or as new proposals. See Steward's brain plan Part II for the current candidate pipeline.

Related

• Alex_ACT_Steward — top-of-chain, author + curator of every shipped artefact
• Alex_ACT_Illustrator_Plugin — first shipped Steward CLI plugin; proves the transport
• Alex_ACT_Plugin_Mall — CLI-native plugin marketplace v3.0.0 GA (2026-07-28)
• Alex_ACT_Memory — shared Git-backed memory bus (sibling, not a plugin)
• Alex_ACT_Edition — frozen v1 heir-template compatibility surface (v4.2.0, 2026-07-28)
• Steward Plan Phase 3: gap #1 — this repo's creation is the partial resolution

License

MIT — same as sibling plugins.